This is going to be a negative post. It’s all about growing a healthy distaste for the most foul of pastimes: shopping.
We’re going to work on cultivating nausea and repulsion. It’ll be fun!
“But I love shopping” you say? Nonsense! You’ve been trained to think you love shopping. Shopping is odious.
If it’s not obvious to you already, stay tuned for an upcoming post on why shopping is so vile. But if you’re already with me, then my mission today is to give you tools to solidify your loathing.
So what are the ways we can build up a healthy aversion?
1. The First Step Is To Admit We Have A Problem.
It’s obvious that shopping is a problem when we look at the wasted time and money and its effects on our happiness and health. It may be more or less of a problem for you, but it’s a problem, and we need to acknowledge that.
Language is powerful and if you insist on calling shopping “spending a relaxing afternoon at the mall” or worse, “shopping therapy,” you’ll never break free.
Simply naming shopping an addiction, a disease, or a problem is a wonderful and necessary first step in breaking down the appeal it holds.
2. Take Pride In Nothing!
How often do you see people on TV or even your friends drop a massive pile of shopping bags onto the floor with a weary smile and big, satisfied sigh? For some reason, we feel a sense of pride when we go out, “win” at a sale, get some stuff, and bring it home to hoard. But this isn’t healthy or logical.
Foster a sense of pride in nothing. Next time you go shopping, try to take pride in how little you come home with!
3. Then Brag About That Nothing
Call up a friend and tell her about your shopping experience. Brag about the incredible sales you discovered and how you didn’t buy a single thing! Gloat over how those obnoxious advertisements had no effect on you!
4. Make Fun Of Shopping
Next time you’re talking with a friend, laugh and tell him about the most ridiculous advertisement you saw recently and how transparent the marketer’s attempts at swindling you were.
Tease yourself [kindly] everytime you notice your attention being pulled toward a shiney new thing. Chuckle about how easily you’re tricked into thinking you want something, when you know better.
5. Focus On The Negatives
Instead of that new, shiny gizmo you want, focus on everything that’s dreadful about shopping. The wasted time, the annoying customers, the snotty clerks, finding parking.
Focus on the stress of others when you see them shopping. See that rude, demanding lady at the counter in front of you? It’s obvious that humans are not most happy and alive when they’re shopping.
6. Immerse Yourself In Anti-Consumerist Media
By immersing yourself in anti-consumerist and minimalist media, you won’t just develop stronger antipathy towards shopping and consuming, you’ll expand your awareness of what kind of a culture you live in, how to live a more authentic and meaningful life, and how to help others do the same.
So read books and magazines on minimalism and anti-consumerism. [Maybe read the books in the store, then return them to the shelf, or check them out from your library?]
Read blogs and pick up some zines from your local independent bookstore. Hand them off to friends when you’re done.
Get excited about culture jamming.
There are so many movements and communities that are founded on or have a solid anti-consumerist ideal…punks, Buddhists, hippies, hackers, minimalists. Latch on to these and learn from them!
Some of my favorite minimalist, anti-consumption, and anti-media media are:
- Advertising Self-Defense by Everett Bogue – a great post on an inspiring blog about minimalism, Far Beyond The Stars. Everett lives with only 50 things and will make you rethink how you live your life!
- Culture Jam: How to Reverse America’s Suicidal Consumer Binge-And Why We Must
– a book that revolutionized the way I looked at consumerism and advertising ten years ago
- Ad Busters – a magazine for culture-jammers and people dissatisfied with being spoon-fed corporate media. Not always “easy” to read or agree with, but oftentimes incredible.
7. Train Yourself To React “No”
When someone offers you something, even if it’s something you aren’t that excited about, what’s your first reaction? Do you say “Sure!” and thank them? Do you think “If it’s free, why not?”
This is backward, and this reaction promotes compulsive shopping. Stuff is a liability and drains your energy. If it enters your life, it should only be because it’s earned it.
Your default response to stuff should be “no.” Free or convenient or cheap is not a reason to say “yes.”
Now practice it out loud! Imagine a sales clerk offering you something you’re looking at for free. Laugh a little bit, and feel a twinge of disdain for this thing that’s being pushed on you. Shake your head and say “No. No thank you.”
Try it with a laugh. Try it condescendingly. Try it sweetly. Try it pulling back in pain at the suggestion. Try it pleadingly, “No! Anything but a new thing! Please don’t!”
I’m serious. Actually do this. How repulsive can you make stuff feel in your mind? How laughable can you make the idea that you would want something just because it’s available?
8. Induce Nausea
Next time you’re sick, go shopping. If you aren’t sick, pretend you are! Laugh about it. Even if you don’t take it seriously, pretend that shopping makes you queasy, and it will slowly lose its appeal.
Really feel this. Anticipate how ill you’ll be made by the fluorescent light, the noise, the artificial scents, the flashing big screen TVs.
Feel the store as the source of your headache. Build an association in your mind between feeling gross and the shopping “experience.”
Even if it’s a joke to you, our subconsciouses take things literally and believe what we tell them quite easily. This is why affirmations, cheesy as they are, work.
Strengthen your new association between sickness and shopping every time you’re sick and every time you’re shopping.
Shopping? Gross.
9. Notice And Reprogram Your Triggers
What are your shopping triggers?
In the past for me, it’s been boredom. When I was younger, in true teen-age fashion, it was to get away from my parents.
There are many shopping triggers you might have:
- sadness
- stress
- socializing with friends
- boredom
- loneliness
- maybe shopping on your way home from work has become a habit
Notice your shopping triggers and patterns, and reprogram them.
- if you’re sad or lonely, try calling a friend
- if you’re stressed, do yoga or go for a walk
- if you’re bored, read a book
- if you shop to socialize, do something radical and suggest that you hang out with your friends in the park or do some crafts together. If they don’t want to spend time with you outside of the mall, maybe you need new friends.
- if you shop after work, go home immediately and take your newly found time to take a nap or cook a really nice meal for yourself!
Shopping Is Dis-Ease
It’s stressful, time-consuming, and detrimental to our emotional and physical health.
Shopping is not therapy. Shopping is a dis-ease, and we need therapy from shopping.
Hopefully you can use these tricks to disempower shopping and turn it into something you dread.
Just Don’t Be A Jerk About It
One last thing: don’t use your newfound powers for evil.
People will be curious and interested to hear about your new perspective. But you won’t have many friends if you begin making icky squinty faces and scoffing anytime they mention a new skirt or video game they’re excited about.
If you’re polite and lead by example, the people who will hear your message will follow. And if they don’t, don’t worry about it. Focus on yourself, minimize your own shopping, and use all that extra energy, time, and money to do amazing things!
I’m compiling a list of reasons to hate shopping for a future post, so if you have any reasons you despise it that you’d like to share, please leave a comment!
] chloe [
